Operations to combat a major oil
spill can require the mobilisation in a matter of days of tens of thousands
of people from very varied backgrounds: civil and military servants of the
State, civil servants and contract employees of local authorities, personnel
from private companies, volunteers from near and far, individually or in
groups, and their management over a period of several weeks to several months.

The vast majority of these participants have no previous experience in oil
spill response. They must therefore not only be equipped, supervised, and
given meals and accommodation, but must also be trained in a few hours to
play their role and to take precautions to avoid causing additional damage
through poorly carried out response actions.

Training responders

Whatever the quality of the procedures laid out in contingency plans, it
is difficult to avoid delays and inadequacies in the first few days when
setting up operations.

Negative images are promptly broadcast by the media, such as team leaders
complaining about the lack of resources or the irritation of volunteers
who feel useless and insufficiently supervised.

Temporary disruptions can also occur, such as excessive collection of lightly
oiled sand saturating the waste disposal and storage chain.

Response to the pollution from the Erika involved operations at sea
and on land lasting for around 30 months, with an estimated total of around
400,000 man days of work. On the busiest days, the workforce reached some
15,000 people, not including volunteers, who were not recorded.

To manage the on-land side of operations, a zonal response centre, 4 departmental
response centres (or permanent response centres) and 19 advanced response
centres were set up, with interministerial coordination at the core.

Managing operations

Deploying an effective response may require several
levels of actions, amongst which the allocation of responsibilities should
be very clearly delineated. In France, three levels are generally distinguished:

This choice is in the hands of the response coordination
unit, which is assisted by one or several scientific, technical and financial
advisory groups.

Actions at the source

• Stop or reduce the
spill • Make the vessel lighter (transfer contents into another
vessel) • Contain or recover the pollutant • Disperse
the pollutant • Burn the pollutant if this will not introduce
new risks for humans and the environment

Response at sea

• Disperse in the water mass by
spreading dispersants • Contain with booms and recover using pumps
and skimmers • Trawl using skimming booms or vessels fitted with
skimming arms • Spread sorbents on the slick and recover using
surface trawlers

Response by the shoreline

• Act on slicks at sea close to
the shoreline • Protect sensitive areas of the shore using booms
• Direct drifting slicks towards areas of low sensitivity •
Retain slicks in affected zones to avoid the extension of polluted areas
• Contain and recover pollutant by the shoreline (same techniques
as in the open sea) • Disperse carefully, by limited spreading
of dispersants, under ecological control

Response onshore

• Set up clean-up worksites,
with a good waste treatment chain • Limit response on very sensitive
sites, such as marshes, to what is strictly necessary
• Ban seafood
sales and shoreline access where necessary • Evacuate and treat
the recovered waste • When operations are complete, restore waste
storage sites, altered access routes and soiled vegetation